Co-op News
Gift to Smithsonian Has Co-op Ties
There’s a new and, some would say, timely addition to the nation’s attic.
HILCO Co-op’s George Thiess and Smithsonian curator Carlene Stephens with his invention. (Photo Courtesy of George Thiess)
A prototype of the world’s first working digital watch recently joined the ranks of the some 3.3 million artifacts at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History in Washington, D.C.
The watch’s inventor and museum donor is George H. Thiess, who also happens to be board vice president of HILCO Electric Cooperative, Itasca, Texas, and director of Brazos Electric Power Co-op, Waco.
Thiess, now 81, developed the pulsar watch with a light-emitting diode display in 1968 while at his Garland-based firm, Electro-Data. A year later, he joined with the Hamilton Watch Co. to market the Hamilton Pulsar watch based on his prototype.
Since then, he had kept a research model of the watch in a safe deposit box.
“I was originally thinking of letting my son, Eric, inherit it,” said Thiess, who lives outside Hillsboro. “But then he said the museum should have it.”
At left is George Thiess and his digital watch on the May 1970 cover of a jewelry trade magazine. (Image Courtesy of TEC)
Thiess’ invention plays a big role in the history of modern wristwatches, said Carlene Stephens, a curator in the museum’s Division of Work and Industry. She approached Thiess about five and one-half years ago about donating the item to the museum.
“The watch is a working prototype for the first commercially successful digital watch, the Hamilton Pulsar…and fills a significant spot” in the museum’s collection of modern electronic wristwatches components, said Stephens.
Thiess said the donated watch is “very delicate” because it has 44 integrated circuits and “barely red” LEDs that display the time.
“Today, digital watches only have one circuit,” he said, and they also cost a lot less. “In 1972, a digital watch cost over $2,000,” roughly the same price as a Chevrolet Vega.
Stephens said Thiess’ watch likely won’t go on display but will reside in the “study collection with the rest of the museum’s clocks and watches.”
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